Early in DID therapy, it is standard practice to attempt mapping the internal system of parts in some way. We try to learn who is who and how these parts relate to each other. We might learn useful things, like the action systems parts operate in or develop names for parts to make communication easier. Some people engage in in-depth descriptions of how parts believe they look like or they create complex inner storylines. While that might help parts to feel more familiar it might also not be the most useful information about them long-term. There is a way to get lost in mapping when it is done without guidance and an understanding of what might be useful and what is just fun. Which doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun. We should just be aware that what we are doing doesn’t have that much therapeutic value. Any engagement with parts is better than avoidance of them, especially early on in therapy when avoidance is the biggest challenge to overcome. Eventually, there will be something like a second phase of mapping that looks different and examines the depth of who parts are instead of the surface information.
We will explain different elements that might be interesting to look at in detail.
Patterns of attention and focus
When we are trying to learn more about the mind of a part and how they function as a complex entity within the system, it helps to look at the things they pay attention to. Everyone has patterns in what we notice and don’t notice in the sea of stimuli that comes at us from the outside world. Parts differ in their responses to stimuli and some might focus on it while others avoid it (Yolanda Schlumpf has done interesting research that shows that this even happens with stimuli that are so short they never reach concious awareness. Parts respond differently with their attention.) When I walk through the mall I might ignore other people completely and just look at the displays while other parts watch people intently to screen for danger. Dissociative parts have stable patterns of what they pay attention to and what they tend to focus on. Something that is commonly experienced is higher attention when we are in the candy isle or pass a toy store. Usually we will notice positive and negative triggers for parts when we map their attention patterns. Personal needs and abilities will also play a role. We notice what we need or the things we know how to use. Food draws more attention when a part feels hunger. Parts will only focus on knitting needles on sale when they actually know how to knit.
Patterns of meaning
The way we perceive reality is made up of all the things we notice, how we interpret them and how we interact with them. We get the raw information that is filtered through our patterns of attention and then we create meaning from these building blocks. Over time our patterns of meaning making solidify when it comes to things we encounter regularly. When there is suddenly only cold water in my bathroom I now know that it is the old heater, again. I don’t bother trying other explanations until this one is proven wrong. My downstairs neighbor created really weird noises every weekend that sounded like he was washing gravel in his bathtub. I just decided he is somehow washing a fish tank in a really thorough way. I don’t even know if he had fish or how you would clean a tank but that is the pattern of meaning I created from that noise until I couldn’t imagine any other reason for it. These patterns of how parts understand the world, how they make meaning and what ends up being meaningful to them are insights into their interpretations of stimuli and their interaction with them. They become important when their patterns reflect the world of TraumaTime and the meaning they make does not serve us well in our life today. We are still understanding the world as if it was the old one which means that we also experience it like the old one, and miss the meaning that could be made from the current one. Because patterns of meaning making are relatively stable in dissociative parts we might have to work with them directly to help parts to come to new conclusions through new interactions with the world today.
Patterns of motivation
After exploring attention and meaning it is a natural next step to examine what is important to parts. What they care about is a direct result of what they notice and how they interpret that. This is where mapping can get really interesting and helpful. We understand parts in more depth when we understand what drives them and why this is important to them in the first place. Knowing why parts act in certain ways is the key to understanding and adapting behavior and negotiating compromise. It also helps to notice when motivation is rooted in survival patterns of the past and needs presentification.
What is important? Why is it important? Why do they care about it so much?
The answer to these questions starts to give us an outline of who they are and about their character. It is often surprising to map the core of what drives a ‘dark‘ part just to realize that this is totally reasonable within their understanding of the world. They are not bad. They really care about stuff that used to be a real issue. When we work with these meaningful patterns of what drives parts we have a much better chance to resolve complex conflict and negotiate a life that makes sense for everyone today. These are important building blocks of how the system functions and they are not meant to go away. They are pieces in the puzzle of a full human being that need to find their place in the big picture.
Patterns of will
These patterns of motivation logically lead us toward patterns of will. If something is important to parts and they care about it, they will want something in connection with it. A child part who likes animals does not just feel that animals are important, they might want to pet one. A wish is born. The will that drives parts can be an all-consuming force. It is a power that sits so deep that it is impossible to ignore long-term and pretend that it is not there. People with DID often have a tendency to suppress the will of parts because it does not feel appropriate for an adult. That is how we create power struggles. When parts want things, that is a fantastic sign that they are alive and kicking. Wants are absolutely precious. It needs wisdom, pacing, guidance, agreements and all kinds of inner work to navigate wants because it usually isn’t as simple as directly getting the thing we want unless it is small and there is no conflict of interests inside. In bigger issues the wants of parts might contradict each other, and over time and with experience we learn the art of navigating these situations. Please note: needy parts can feel utterly overwhelmed when we just give them what they want and leave them alone with that experience. It is too much. They need guidance and pacing. Blindly fulfilling wants without a plan can create more distress then it is worth.
Patterns of behavior
We might have noticed patterns of behavior in parts before because behavior can be observed while inner experiences need to be explored. But patterns of behavior will make a whole lot more sense once we see them in a logical connection to attention, interpretation, meaning, motivation and will. A part reacts aggressively because of a stimulus that predicts danger for them and it is important to them to never feel powerless again and they want to defend themselves successfully now. They aren’t just aggressive. But who they are results in patterns of aggressive behavior under certain circumstances. Some actions seem more available to them than others and there will be actions that feel utterly impossible right now. Knowing what parts experience as possible or impossible actions is an important key. They might also not know how to interact with something or someone if that is not within their behavioral range yet. It is like playing around with a comb while having no idea it is meant to be used on hair. Behaviors that are obvious to some parts might not be obvious to others. New behavior has to be experienced to really make sense on a sensory level.
Over time, spontaneous actions turn into habits. Habits are stable patterns of actions that develop from our preferences, where we don’t think through the whole action anymore before we do it. Knowing the habits of parts is important because it is in the nature of a habit to skip parts of the mental processes behind actions and just get to the action quickly. That also means that parts might not notice change in the outside world that would require adaptation. They habitually skip the step that would initiate reorientation. If we just follow our habits they can be misaligned with our life today. Eventually, we might realize that our preferences have changed because of new information, or they are interacting with those of other parts and we might decide to adapt our behavior and create new habits. This is the step that therapists are so eager to get to but we won’t be able to do it on the surface alone. A change in habits does require an in-depth understanding of how a part’s inner experience works and a new experience in the outside world.
Patterns in the system
When we add up all these things that we have explored about a part we get a much better idea of who they are. We understand their triggers and predictions about the future, why certain conflict has to exist within a system made of parts like these and how goals work together or contradict each other. We find the keys to understanding what moves parts and why they feel and act the way they do. Then we take a new look at our old system map and reflect on the dynamics between parts. With all this new understanding of motivation and will, it creates new sense in how we function as a system and why things are the way they are. It becomes more obvious that no part can be disregarded because they have meaning for the system as a whole. The whole picture starts to make more sense and if we are lucky we will notice that all this really belongs together and has to work together in an intricate way to make the whole person work out somehow. What started as a fun game of listing appearances and likes can turn into this massive understanding of who we are and how it all fits together. It is adding dimensions that we won’t reach if we stick to discussing ‘roles‘. This is not how you would map things early in therapy. But it becomes an incredibly satisfying and rewarding way to explore ourselves later when we are not so scared of what we might find in the depth of us.
The new map
A rough guide for a new system map could follow these questions:
-
- What do parts notice and pay attention to? Can you explain why?
- How do parts explain the world? What does a specific core experience mean to them?
- What is important to them? Why is that important? Why does it matter so much?
- What do they want? What kind of will drives them to act?
- How do their behavior and habits make sense in that context? What actions seem possible or impossible?
- How does all this relate to what you know about other parts? How does it interact?
[No, there is no real source for this article apart from a broad gesture in the direction of psychology as a discipline that examines things like attention, motivation and behavior. I mixed in broader ideas from enactivism.]